Nature, Second Inning

I guess I still don’t have the writing-for-a-blog groove down. Everything that comes out ends up sounding like narration. Fairly decent narration, I’ve been told, but that’s not what this genre calls for. People don’t come to blogs looking for an essay, they come for a conversation. I’ve always envied Mrs. Kennedy’s beautiful, easy across-the-coffee-table posts – damn, how I’ve envied them! Reading Fussy, we’re not leafing through some little witty spat of words in an old copy of Reader’s Digest, we’re sitting there, in the borrowed fuzzy bunny slippers of a previous houseguest while she putters around the kitchen cleaning up after Jackson and unloads about the crisis du jour. You can even smell the coffee.

Last week, I was sitting on city bus #304 in Santa Monica, westbound toward the ocean in stunning sunlight. Endless summer all around. Now I’m huddled in my hotel room in Hanover, N.H. braving the latest Nor’easter that’s dumping the latest few inches of snow, sleet and freezing rain on New England.

Remember that post a few weeks ago, about trying to get up to Hanover? How a vicious storm blew in and shut New England down for a couple of days? After a couple more attempts to get out there, I gave up and rescheduled. Some time later in the spring, when the weather would be better. Yeah, like mid-April.

This time, I actually made it to Boston before the storm hit. Cars wiped out on the side of the road, snow blowing sideways, police cars and wreckers everywhere. A real spring afternoon.

But that was today. Yesterday was lovely. Had a lazy day across the coffee table with Randy and Lori, eventually making it out in the evening to see The Nields play in a small Unitarian church. If you’re a folkie and have never experienced Boston, you just can’t imagine what you’re missing. Wonderful, fabulous musician playing little coffeehouse gigs small and intimate enough that you can have conversations with them during the show. Everywhere.

If you’ve only ever lived in Boston, you can’t imagine what you’ve got. Imagine, instead of folk music, we were talking restaurants. Imagine, you Bostonians, that on any given night, there were only a few restaurants open in the entire Boston area. Maybe Legal Seafood in Kendall is open tonight, and tomorrow it’s the Dairy Queen out in Waltham. If you want to go out to eat, those are your choices – put it on the calendar, and plan ahead. Similarly – those of you who don’t live in Boston, imagine it’s a Friday night. Hmm, who do you want to see tonight? The Nields? John Gorka? Ellis Paul? Nah, we just saw him – let’s see the Nields instead.

Anyhow, now it’s today, and instead of working on that damned talk that I’m supposed to be giving tomorrow, I’m procrastinating by blogging. Badly. But writing crappy blog entries beats facing up to the fact that I’m really not ready for tomorrow’s talk.

Okay. Now that I’ve got that confession in writing, I’m going to do it. I’m going to go ahead and post this bit of drivel then get to my slides. Really. Right after I check email again. And maybe another look at Scarygoround. And…

David Pablo Cohn

I’m David Cohn, known informally as “pablo”. Former Google Research Scientist, now other stuff: writer, flight instructor, folk musician, travel blogger, Antarctic tech support guy, dad and - if you can believe it - farmer.

I help run Natembea, a collaborative farm in Port Townsend that provides land and community for young farmers.

My writing tends toward explorations of how our lives intersect with those of others and with the world around us.